Straight Outta Deadwood

by David Boop

  Hiram sat on the sofa opposite. Michael sat beside him, bouncing slightly and drumming his fingers on his knees. The boy could stand to have his hair cut. For that matter, Hiram probably could, too.

  “I don’t just bring food,” Hiram said. “Sometimes I help solve family disputes. Dug a well over in Price last week. I do what I can to be of assistance, when I don’t have to plant and harvest. Maybe I can help you find work, Mr. McCrae.”

  McCrae stared at the hardwood floor.

  “Horse ranching, isn’t it?” Hiram asked.

  McCrae grunted. “Only ever owned one or two at a time, myself. But until last week, I was foreman on one of the local ranches. You really want to help?” McCrae nodded toward the back door, eastward. “Go talk to the owners of the Flying Z, get me my job back.”

  Hiram sat quietly, hoping to hear still, small voices of guidance. He didn’t.

  What to do? He had to help McCrae if he could. But the same neighbors who had sent Hiram to find Elbert McCrae had also suggested that McCrae might be a man who deserved to lose his job.

  McCrae stared at him. How long had Hiram been silent? “I was told the Flying Z lost a herd,” Hiram said.

  “Five hundred head.”

  “The Oldhams figure it’s your fault the horses escaped?” The Oldhams owned the Flying Z.

  McCrae laughed bitterly. “Worse than that, Hiram. They think I stole ’em. Thirty years of honest work under my belt and a spotless reputation don’t matter. They think I made five hundred horses just disappear. That’d make me the greatest horse thief in history, I expect. And hell, I’d be off in California or Texas, spending the money. Instead, I’m here, knocking door to door and asking for more work.”

  “You don’t look like a guilty man,” Hiram agreed.

  “And yet they won’t hire me back,” McCrae said. “Nor will any of the other ranches. And there’s no work for me in Heber, not even at the tack and saddle shops or in the slaughterhouse. Everyone figures me for a horse thief.”

  “I’d like to help.” Hiram balanced his sweat-stained fedora over one fist as if it were a hat jack, looking out the window at the bleached blue sky. “You have any idea what happened to the horses?”

  McCrae opened his mouth, shut it. He looked at Michael briefly, frowned, and then stood, pacing back and forth. “I don’t like to say.”

  “I’ll go talk to the owners of the Flying Z,” Hiram said. “Whether or not you tell me anything else. But the more I know, the more I can help.”

  McCrae stopped his pacing and stared at Hiram. “Yeah,” he said, “okay. It was Indians.”

  Indians? Hiram tried to avoid looking astonished. “The Utes? Uinta and Ouray Reservation? It’s been a long time since the Utes rustled any horses.”

  “I didn’t say it was them.” McCrae cleared his throat. “And I can’t say I really know one kind of Indian from another, begging your pardon, but I see the Utes from time to time, shopping down at Heber, or passing by at the Flying Z. They drive cars, they wear jeans and boots.”

  “Surprise,” Michael muttered.

  “The horse thieves looked…old-fashioned,” McCrae continued. “Horseback. Paint and feathers, the whole thing.”

  The heliotropius in his pocket, the red-streaked green stone with so many useful properties, lay still; McCrae practiced no deception. Hiram felt a vague sense of disquiet. “I’ll go talk to the owners.”

  * * *

  “Of course, we’ll give Mr. McCrae back his job,” Ada Oldham said. Her husband and co-owner of the Flying Z, Ira, stood with his head and shoulders under the hood of his vehicle, grunting his agreement. “Just as soon as we get back our horses.”

  “He says he didn’t steal them,” Hiram said. “I believe him.”

  “He said Indians in war paint took the horses.” Ada wore her hair in a simple bun and dressed in calico. She and her husband were working on their Fargo truck together. The two-story ranch house must have had seven or eight rooms, judging from the outside—the Oldhams were doing well, but didn’t dress or act rich. In other circumstances, Hiram would have liked them very much, but now he felt waves of distrust radiating from Mrs. Oldham, and, tightening his own stomach, he tried not to radiate it right back. “You believe that, too?”

  “I believe he isn’t a liar.” Hiram watched Michael bounce from side to side in the front of his own truck, the Ford Model AA. “Is he a drunk?” The former foreman had seemed a little defensive about his drinking habits.

  “The man is a teetotaler, as far as I know,” Ada said. “Raised Kentucky Baptist. But really…war paint?”

  McCrae hadn’t exactly said “war paint,” at least not to Hiram, but there was no sense picking a needless fight. “You got any maps?”

  “What kind of maps?” Mrs. Oldham asked. Under the hood of the Fargo, Mr. Oldham banged metal against metal and cursed mildly. “If you’re looking for a highway, there aren’t any. That’s why we came out here to the Uintas to run our horses. Get away from the big towns like Provo and Ogden. Even Heber’s getting too big for my Ira’s taste, these days.”

  “Just horses?” Hiram wondered.

  “Also cattle.” Ada shrugged. “It was horses that got stolen.”

  “All the maps you got. The older, the better,” Hiram said. “If you had any maps from when you first bought the land, I’d be especially happy to look at those.”

  “What are you thinking, exactly?” She eyed him with suspicion.

  “Mr. McCrae saw something,” Hiram said slowly. Then he dodged her question with a slight evasion that didn’t quite amount to a lie: “Maybe if I look on the maps, I’ll see what it was.”

  “Like a rock formation he took in the darkness for an Indian in headdress?” Mrs. Oldham suggested dryly.

  “Yes,” Hiram said. “Something like that.”

  “I’ll give you all my maps,” Mrs. Oldham said. “Only remember, I’m not looking for an explanation. I’m looking for five hundred horses.”

  “I get your five hundred horses back, will you hire Elbert McCrae again?”

  “Of course.”

  He waited with Michael by the truck while Ada Oldham went into the ranch house. The boy looked at Hiram with his dark liquid eyes and smiled. Hiram smiled back and tried not to let the sudden pang of loss, such as came over him every time he thought of his wife, twist that smile into a frown.

  “So Mrs. Oldham seems to accept the idea that Indians might be thieves,” Michael said. “Only she doesn’t believe in the war paint.”

  That ended Hiram’s nostalgia, and he tousled the boy’s hair.

  Ada Oldham returned; her facial expression was softened. “I only got the one, or at least, only the one I can find.”

  Hiram spread the map over the hood of his Double-A. Michael joined him and looked at it over Hiram’s shoulder, standing on the running board and hoisting himself high into the air on the mirror.

  “We’re here?” Hiram indicated a rectangle on the map.

  “No, that’s our neighbors. Our house wasn’t built when this map was drawn. We’re here.” Ada Oldham pointed. “And the horses were penned here.”

  She pointed at a meandering line. Above it, in a white space, were written the words Carre Shinob.

  “Carre,” Hiram said. “I’m no good with languages, but that looks French to me. But Shinob…I don’t know. What is that?”

  Ada Oldham shrugged. “The man who sold us the land gave us the map, and the map came with those words on it. I have no idea what they mean. The line there is the creek, and that’s where we had the horses penned. The space under those words is a ridge above the creek.”

  “The French trappers got as far south as Utah, back in their day,” Hiram said. “Provo’s named after one of them.”

  “I taught a little school, back when I was Miss Halstead,” Ada Oldham said. “And I think I remember enough French to know that carré is a square. That long, high ridge looks nothing like a square. But you’re welcome to go look around it all y
ou like.”

  “Bit far from the house, isn’t it?”

  “You gotta go through Heber. We only moved the horses there this year; it was McCrae who suggested it. He scouted out all our land and said he thought that was the best grass. Used to keep the horses just across the road here.”

  “Thank you.” Hiram handed back the map.

  * * *

  Since they were passing through Heber anyway, Hiram stopped and sent a telegram to his friend Mahonri Jones at B.Y. High in Provo. Mahonri was a librarian who loved a good riddle, and if his own library didn’t have the answer, he could walk up the hill to the university.

  As Hiram and Michael bounced up the rutted road between high ridges, nearing the creek where the Oldhams had kept their cattle, the late summer sun began to sink.

  “You were in charge of packing the truck,” Hiram said to his son.

  “We have blankets and water and sandwiches.”

  “What do we have for light?”

  “A flashlight and an oil lantern. Did you pack the gun?”

  “Go ahead and check,” Hiram suggested.

  Michael looked into the glove compartment, finding the revolver and the spare full moon. “Shall I make sure it’s loaded? Maybe shoot a couple of fenceposts for good luck?”

  “You let me handle the gun,” Hiram said. “You’re thirteen. You get the flashlight.”

  The road ended at the gate of a rail fence that abruptly blocked off the canyon. The fresh darkness of mountain evening filled the canyon before them. Hiram and Michael both climbed out of the Double-A. Hiram tucked the revolver into the back of his belt, and brought along the oil lantern and a box of matches.

  Michael solemnly carried the flashlight.

  “Can I climb it?” Michael asked.

  “Stay close to me.”

  They climbed the fence. Oil lantern lit, Hiram took slow steps. He breathed in the pine-scented air and, following the burbling creek, looked for horses. He saw plenty of fresh droppings, green, compact balls of recently-digested grass, but none of the beasts themselves and no gap in the fence through which they might have gone. McCrae was right; the grass here was tall and lush, and the stream looked year-round and abundant. And somehow, the horses were gone.

  The ridge staring down from above the canyon was bare of trees for its upper half. In the nearly moonless night, its bulk was a shadow blocking out the enduring stars of the northern sky. Hiram found himself standing still, staring at the ridge, with the hair on the back of his neck standing up.

  He pulled his fedora down tighter and scratched the back of his neck to make the feeling go away. It didn’t.

  “Michael, does Carre Shinob mean anything in the language of the Dine?”

  Michael’s Navajo was limited—he’d been a baby when Hiram and his wife had adopted him—but he had learned a few words. “The people live really far south of here, Pap.”

  “I know.”

  Michael circled his adopted father without slowing down as they talked. “I don’t think Carre Shinob means anything.”

  Hiram nodded. He felt a flutter in his chest, and the hair on the backs of his arms was standing up as well. “Are you tired?”

  “It isn’t late, Pap.”

  “Shall we hike up that ridge?”

  “We’d see better stars up there.” They didn’t see great stars anymore on the farm in Lehi; Salt Lake was just too close, and Utah Valley was filling up with farms. But on new moons, Hiram liked to drive Michael out west toward Tooele, where the sky was as dark as it had ever been for Jim Bridger.

  They hiked up the slope. As they gained elevation on its flank, Hiram saw that the ridge hunkered down into a saddle and then rose to a final promontory before dropping into the two streams that had carved it.

  “Up there.” He pointed, and a shiver ran up his spine.

  “Pap,” Michael said. “I have a funny feeling in my stomach.”

  Hiram did, too. It was a feeling he’d felt the one time he’d ridden the tilt-a-whirl in Salt Lake, a sensation that reminded him of falling. “Let’s both keep our lights on,” he told his son. “That way we can always see each other.”

  The night air was crisp in the Uintas, even in August, but the hillside was steep and Hiram was sweating by the time they reached the saddle. He shook sweat out of his fedora, wiped his forehead on the back of a sleeve, and then rolled both sleeves up past his elbows.

  Michael stuck close to his side as he caught his breath. The boy shone the watery yellow beam of his flashlight in all directions, but especially up to the top of the promontory.

  “There’s no one up there,” Michael said.

  “Right,” Hiram agreed. “Let’s go have a look.”

  At the height of promontory was a flat patch of bare earth, bordered by a handful of weathered stones and a few stubborn bushes, barely larger than weeds. In the center of the stones lay a low pile of rocks, oblong in shape, about seven feet by three.

  A pile of rocks such as you might lay over a body in a shallow burial.

  “What is this place?” Michael’s voice trembled.

  Hiram shivered, but not from the chill; there was no wind and he was sweating. A sensation like an electric current played along his spine. He wasn’t especially sensitive, not like Grandma Hettie had been. The veil had been thin for that old woman, and there were moments when past and present alike, as well as the movements of spirits and angels, seemed to be an open book, written for her exclusive reading. Hiram didn’t have that.

  But neither was he an insensate clod. A spirit waited atop this hill.

  He stooped to examine the rocks and saw that some had been disturbed. He crouched to poke in the earth where the stones had been removed and found a strange set of objects: a scrap of canvas cloth, a large animal claw with a hole drilled through it, one leather glove with the tips of the fingers and thumb cut off, and a strip of paper.

  Unfolding the paper, he found an improbable signature: Brigham Young.

  Hiram stood and took a slow breath. Should he take Michael back to the truck? But the boy was already nervous; surely being left alone in the truck would terrify him, despite his bravado.

  Hiram could come back another night, but it was a long drive from anywhere he was willing to sleep, and besides, a spirit that was here tonight might not be here tomorrow.

  “Listen, son.” Hiram knelt, to be able to look Michael directly in the face as they spoke. “I’m not going to lie to you. I think there are spirits on this hill.”

  “More than usual?” Michael asked.

  Hiram nodded. “But remember, a spirit has no flesh and bone, and cannot hurt you. No matter what it shows you, it can’t make you do anything. And if you want it to go away, you can cast it out in the name of Jesus.”

  “I remember.” Michael swallowed. He was a brave boy. Hiram tousled his long hair and Michael smiled faintly.

  “I want you to turn your flashlight off, but hold on to it, and keep your thumb on the switch.”

  “I can do that.” Michael turned off his flashlight, and gripped it with both hands. “Are you going to turn off your lamp?”

  “No,” Hiram said. “I’m going to use it to try to talk to the spirit.”

  Michael swallowed so hard that Hiram could hear his Adam’s apple move. “Why?”

  “I want to help Mr. McCrae get his job back.”

  “You think the spirits might know where the horses are?”

  “Yes.”

  Michael nodded.

  What on earth was the scrap of paper signed by Brigham Young? A contract, an old deed to the land? A missionary commission? An order for wheat? Hiram shook his head.

  He set the lantern on the ground beside the oblong heap of stones.

  “I can tell you’re here,” he said.

  Nothing. The air was still. A hundred yards away though he was, Hiram thought he could hear the bubbling of the stream.

  “This must be a lonely place. Don’t you want to talk?”

  T
he stars shone down, cold and now queerly unfamiliar, as if Hiram had forgotten his years of star lore, or had been transported to an alien world under a different zodiac.

  “That’s my lantern on the ground. I know you can see the flame. If you can hear me, make the flame dance. Don’t try to put it out, just move it.”

  The air was still. Hiram fixed his eyes on the lantern.

  “Just move the flame. Just a little.”

  The flame jumped. As if struck by a sudden gust of wind, the flame snapped sideways for a split second before returning to its normal, upright posture.

  Michael jumped, too, pressing himself against Hiram’s side.

  Hiram wrapped an arm around Michael’s shoulder. “Very good. Now I’m going to ask you questions. If the answer is yes, make the flame move again. Gently, you don’t want to put it out.” But what to ask?

  Michael shivered, and Hiram drew him close.

  “Is there more than one of you?”

  The flame moved.

  “Are there fewer than ten?”

  The flame moved.

  That was a relief. However much the idea of a ghost discomfited Hiram, the idea of a multitude of ghosts was much worse.

  “Are there two of you?” Nothing. “Three? Four? Five?”

  The lantern’s flame moved.

  Strange, though. The heap of stones was the size and shape of the grave of a single person.

  “Are you all men?” Nothing. “All women? Both men and women? Men, women, and children together?”

  The flame moved.

  Hiram frowned. “Are you a family?”

  The flame moved.

  “Pioneers?” Hiram asked. “Mormons?”

  Nothing.

  “Indians?”

  The flame moved.

  Hiram pressed the ghosts in this slow fashion, eliciting additional information. The Indians hadn’t died in this spot, but had been moved here. Asking about revolutions of the stars, he thought he got the information that they had been here for seventy years—that made 1865, which was consistent with the signature of Brigham Young, who died in 1877.

  He stabbed in the dark, but couldn’t land on a question that threw any more light on the paper.

  “Two weeks ago, horses were stolen from the valley below this ridge.” Hiram paused. “Did you take them?”